Steaua, forced to improvise for the first clash with Twente

According to the Romanian media, Ilie Stan has one dilemma ahead of tonight’s game: who should play at right back? The first eleven looks something like this: Tatarusanu – Dananae or Martinovic, Chiriches, Geraldo, Brandan – Rusescu, Prepelita, Bicfalvi, Tanase – Tatu, Nikolic.

This spells big problems in defense and midfield! Steaua’s transfer activity, in spite of some good buys, like Chiriches or Chipciu, has proved once again the lack of someone with brains, influent enough to explain the owner on what (type of) players he should be spending his money.

Ilie Stan needed more time and better planning to stand a chance versus Twente.

Ahead of the first and most important match of the year, the coach realizes that Dananae, THE right back, isn’t fit and offers no guarantees right away, so the ONLY other option is to keep playing Martinovic, the guy he wanted to replace due to his obvious limits (especially when going forward). Chiriches and Geraldo will be playing their first official game together in the center, but they are intelligent and good enough to do well, while on the left side there’s a chance to see Brandan? Brandan, the natural left sided player, but who has been Steaua’s best central midfielder in the first part of the season? Nice!

And we move forward, in midfield, where on the right side, either it’s going to be Rusescu or Tatu (more likely), it means Steaua keeps on playing without a natural right midfielder and improvises with a forward. After a two-months long break, nothing has changed… A look in the middle? There is no Bourceanu (suspended), while Brandan should play at left back, so the pair that has done so well last year, the one that kept this team balanced, is now gone. The Prepelita-Bicfalvi pair will work hard defensively, but will eventually drop too deep, so all the threat Steaua will be able to pose tonight should come from the left flank – something Twente is definitely prepared to deal with.

Terrible planning by Steaua, really! I always thought that the winter break in Romania is too long, but looking at how the clubs work in this period, it looks now like it’s not long enough…

Radu Baicu

• 15 years of continuous work in scouting, for top clubs and companies;
• Worked for clubs like Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Hannover 96, covering the Romanian market;
• Worked for Birmingham based company ‘The Scouting Network’ (www.tsn.co.uk) as a football scout;
• Worked for Zurich based company Boutique Football as a scouting network coordinator;
• International scout for Young Boys Bern for 2 years, covering Eastern European football.
• Working for the past 5 years as an international scout for a top French club.